YesVideo will personalize images into a themed DVD. The company receives 5,000 reels and videotapes for conversion per day and believes a huge untapped market remains.

YesVideo will personalize images into a themed DVD. The company receives 5,000 reels and videotapes for conversion per day and believes a huge untapped market remains.

Photo: YesVideo

YesVideo app streams old home movies

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For older generations of Americans, home movie night used to mean waiting for Dad to carefully thread film into a reel-to-reel projector, erect a small silver screen and block any bit of light that peeked through the windows.

But a Santa Clara company called YesVideo launched an app Thursday that is designed to move home movie night into the digital age - by streaming those old films to an iPhone or iPad.

"That's the goal of the mobile app, to bring back that same experience in 2013," said YesVideo Chief Executive Officer Michael Chang. "Even if you're out to dinner with family or friends, you can just pull (the videos) up and share them."

YesVideo started in 1999 by offering consumers an easy way to convert old videotapes into CD-ROMs, and later moved to DVDs as that format became popular.

The company has grown into a $50 million-a-year, 350-employee business. It has converted about 10 million units of consumer-generated home media of various analog formats, including 8mm, 16mm and Super 8mm film, VHS, Hi-8 and Betamax videotape, plus photo prints, negatives and albums.

Online storage

Three years ago, the company began offering customers online storage and private access to their media. Those customers are now spending an average of 44 minutes per viewing session, Chang said.

But with the new iOS app and a rebranded online storage service called Memory Share, YesVideo is trying to latch onto consumers' rapid adoption of mobile devices.

"The concept of the mobile app is to be able to have all your videos with you at all times, unlocking the video for your personal enjoyment," Chang said. "The big thing is being able to share it with your friends and family."

Instead of setting up the old projector or reinstalling the forgotten VHS machine, sharing that video can be accomplished through a mobile phone or tablet, a Facebook post, a Twitter tweet or an e-mailed link.

Claims half the market

There are numerous businesses such as photo finishing services set up to convert legacy media to digital, and consumers can store media in the cloud with services like Dropbox. There are also ways consumers can convert their media themselves through a home computer, although the process is time consuming.

But YesVideo believes it offers an easier solution and has claimed about half the market for home video conversion through partnerships with major chains - Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, Walgreens, CVS, RiteAid and Bartell Drugs - giving it 34,000 retail outlets across the country.

YesVideo also accepts media directly mailed to the company. But Chang said about 98 percent of YesVideo's business comes through those retail outlets because customers are more comfortable handing those irreplaceable memories to someone in person, even though it is still shipped by UPS to processing centers in Santa Clara and Atlanta.

With the volume of media being sent in, the company tells customers to expect about three weeks for processing. The costs vary and can add up - film, for example, costs 18 cents per foot, while two hours of videotape costs $19.99.

But the cost of viewing and sharing online or through mobile devices is included in the conversion fee.

YesVideo now receives about 5,000 videotapes and reels of film each day, and as many as 10,000 during busier times of the year. But Chang believes there is still a large untapped market.

"We estimate that in the U.S., there are 1.5 billion units of film and video still sitting in the corners of closets and in drawers," said Chang, who became an angel investor in YesVideo in 2001 and took over as CEO last year.

By the end of this year, YesVideo plans to let customers upload newer content that is already in digital form so their entire home libraries are in the cloud. "We think consumers are going to expect that digital experience," Chang said.

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